Taguchi analysis on the effect of hot pressing parameters on density and hardness of zirconium diboride

The influence of process parameters on density and hardness of monolithic zirconium diboride ceramic, during hot pressing, has been investigated. This paper publicizes a design of experiment approach, Taguchi methodology, used to improve the processing of ZrB2 concentrated upon three sintering parameters: temperature, dwell time and pressure. An L9 orthogonal array procedure, involves nine experiments for three factors with three levels, which comprises the signal to noise ratio and analysis of variance was employed to optimize the hot pressing parameters. The "higher is better" condition was selected as the quality characteristic. The statistical analysis recognized consolidating temperature as the most consequential factor affecting the relative density and hardness of ZrB2. A relative density of similar to 93% was obtained with a temperature of 1850 degrees C, dwell time of 90 min and pressure of 16 MPa. The Vickers hardness of ZrB2 reached similar to 13.5 GPa at optimal hot pressing conditions. The confirmation tests, carried out under optimum conditions, revealed that the experimental results were in harmony with the expected values from the Taguchi model. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.